hi! I had a question about switching majors. I’m a first year and I’m not sure if I want a major in sociology or something else. how hard would it be to switch to soc in 2nd year if I originally chose something else?
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hey there,
i’m not really sure what you mean by switching in second year. do you mean, like, before your second year starts? midway through your second year?
if you’re currently in your first year, you’re technically not even in a major yet. dunno if you’re aware of this, but u of t runs on a subject POSt system– which means you apply to be admitted to a program of study in the early summer right after your first year. until you’ve completed that procedure, you don’t even technically have a major to switch out of.
you might be referring to your first-year admission stream (which i doubt, because you said something about a major) or the program of interest you declared on your ouac? u of t’s not gonna hold you to that program of interest, nor did getting admitted to u of t mean you were guaranteed access to that major. as for the admission streams, those are mainly done for the purpose of giving priority enrollment to students who are most likely to need certain courses as prerequisites for majors in that stream. if that makes sense.
if you’re hoping to find out more about how to actually choose your programs of study and what that process looks like, i’ve written that up in a previous post and you can view it here. updated deadlines– so you can get a sense of a timeline– are here.
and, well, if you’re asking about how to switch your major halfway through the year, technically you can’t. what you can do is drop the courses related to the major you don’t want anymore, and start taking prerequisites/program requirements for the major you’re more interested in beginning in the winter semester. then, if you have everything you need, you can request a new program and then drop your current one during the program request period following your second year. might wanna note that you should drop after being accepted to your new program, just in case things don’t pan out.
for soc specifically, i don’t know that you’re gonna be able to request it without taking a summer course in the first summer semester and then requesting soc as your major during the second program request period that begins in july. this is because to get into soc, you need at least 65% in SOC100 and SOC150, but you can’t take SOC150 without having already taken SOC100.
tl:dr — switching before second year starts? easy peasy lemon squeezy, as long as you have program prereqs. switching midway through second year? difficult difficult lemon difficult — if you haven’t already taken those first year soc courses, anyway. if you have it should be as easy as requesting soc as a program in the summer.
hope this helped!
be Boundless,
aska